Introduction: The use of digital technology is widespread in healthcare. Nursing students have to be well equipped with digital skills to be able to join the profession. The objective of every healthcare worker is to provide the patient with the best possible care, which is in part aided by digital technology. During their studies, nursing students acquire and further develop digital skills alongside their professional competencies. Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation is to examine nursing students’ self-assessment scores on providing care to patients with chronic noncommunicable diseases. Moreover, the study explores whether and in what way nursing students’ skills in digital technology can help develop their competencies when working with such patients. Methods: This dissertation adopted quantitative research methods. The questionnaire used was developed during the DigiNurse project. The study was conducted during the 2018-2019 school year; the sample included 187 nursing students from the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Health Sciences. The Shapiro-Wilk test of normality, Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation, and the Mann-Whitney U Test were used to examine the data. Results: Students, participating in the study marked themselves as competent in 11 out of 16 tasks. In five tasks they self-assessed as neither competent nor incompetent. Additionally, digital technologies were seen to have a statistically significant influence on students’ self-competence assessment in 10 out of 16 tasks. The correlations were weak and positive. The tasks involving elements of emotion have provided no statistically significant correlation. We have also explored the effect of the students’ year and study mode on competency self-evaluation and its correlation with digital technologies. The study has shown that part-time students’ experiences, gathered outside the curriculum, were statistically significant in connection with competency self-evaluation. Discussion and conclusion: The study shows that nursing students have already acquired working competencies and that they have reached a level of understanding digital technologies that enables them to use these skills to their advantage, thus making the nursing process better. The paper also suggests that digital technologies are of no particular help with nursing interventions in patients with chronic non-communicable diseases, specifically when a nurse is expected to be understanding, incorporate emotional elements or connect with the patient. To promote and enhance the use of digital technologies in nursing, this dissertation calls for a partnership between experts in the fields of informatics and healthcare that would take this technology to another level. The effect of digital technologies on healthcare would thus be even more beneficial.
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